


(hey baby can you) bleed like me

by theviolonist



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-31
Updated: 2012-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:23:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/417781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fan commits suicide in front of the boys.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(hey baby can you) bleed like me

It's not that they don't like it – they do. It's just. It's  _vicious._

There's love and kindness and adoration (but even that, this word,  _adoration_ , verges on the edge of  _too much_ , the sharp iron edge of excess), of course, and they can pretend – it's what they did, at the beginning – that what they have is only that, but it isn't. (Now they don't pretend anymore. They've changed too, whether they like it or not, harder, bitterer.)

It's the sharp gaudy nails that the fans dig into their flesh, trying to tear a piece of them to hoard like a hunting trophy (sometimes in Harry's dreams they pull away with mouths full of blood, lips redredred, nose dripping, and he palms his stomach only to realize that there are bowels leaking out of him and onto the floor – he wakes up of these dreams heavy and blinking, dazed). It's their stomping feet on the ground, the threatening, war-like  _thump thump thump_ that the thousands of them imprint regularly into the ground, a quiet earthquake. It's the high-pitched screams, shrill with concupiscence, zeroing in to pierce their eardrums. It's their songs, shouted back at them and twisted to become battle hymns, the loud beat pounding in their colliding palms.

Of course they're afraid. Who wouldn't be?

It's a good kind of fear. They're teenagers – they're in awe of this magnificent violence, and they don't think  _what could happen_ but  _it's for me_ , the exhilarating elation burning in their throats, an answering scream ready to spill out of their lips.

Of course, they get used to it. Everything wears them down, sleeping in tour bunks and waking up with cricks in their necks, seeing so many faces that they won't remember, saying 'hi' and 'how are you' and 'happy birthday' until the words don't mean anything anymore, meshed into their mouths in a revolting goo. They never get enough sleep, and they have to think about the smallest things, things they never would have cared about if (they always stop there, after the fateful  _if –_  because there are lives they could've lived but they have this one now, and it's no use crying over the blessed stillness they wouldn't have enjoyed if they'd had it). Every grimace, every frown means something, sends people all over the world into a frenzy. A couple of whispered words and it's a scandal. Sometimes they want to lock their mouths and stay silent forever.

But being here – onstage, neck hot with sweat and exhaustion, a mike cradled between their knuckles, in front of so many people, basking in the same ecstasy – never gets old. There's no explaining it, no rationalizing the notes and routines – it just never does.

It isn't a bad compromise. They start to see how they could live like this – maybe not forever, because everyone keeps insisting that they won't last, and they kind of believe it too – but for a little while longer, settling into the weariness that crushes their bones and the constant, crazy happiness.

Until one morning, as they trickle out of their hotel with bags under their eyes and coffee hot in their hands, trying to tune out the screams, one girl shouts their name, puts a gun to her temple, and kills herself.

*

(They'll replay it after that, thousands of times that will make the trackpad go shinier than watching their videos and laughing about themselves ever did. They'll watch, with the rapt attention humans only pay to death, her twisted mouth as she sees them going past – her fingers curling on the gun that she draws it out of her jacket – her eyes that she doesn't close (why doesn't she close them) – the slack-jawed brunette with the bandana next to her – the  _blood_. They'll watch it over and over again, and it will never be less terrifying, and it will never exorcise anything, but they'll do it anyway.)

There's blood on Harry's T-shirt, splattered on his chest, boring holes in the fabric, searing. A beat. He screams.

Liam jumps back and stumbles on the ground, palms flush against the gravel, flesh tearing.

Louis doesn't move.

A loud stream of curses falls off of Niall's mouth, but it's probably more the noise than anything, because as soon as he sees her, he freezes. His cup of coffee falls to the ground. The world isn't in slow-motion – it explodes on the ground and forms a messy puddle, as though trying to imitate the blood that's gathering a few feet away.

Zayn's eyes grow wide. It could be anything.

And in front of them – at first a wave of silence hitting them all, knocking the air out of their chests and the words out of their lips, and they're frozen, mute; then the horror.

(Girls crying, sobbing, screaming, yelling, running – the gigantic mass of them shaking against the metallic barriers, the crowd trying to flee but ultimately scrambling back to collide, running into each other with chattering teeth and erratic limbs. A few of them stay quiet, sink to the ground, knees buckling, shoulders shaken with tears of shock.)

The body is flung over one of the barriers; no one looks at it, but it seems to judge them all, the blond, blood-soaked hair swaying silently in the gentle wind.

*

They're ushered back into the building, a tangle of limbs. Harry is the only one that's trying to resist; he's twisting in Paul's grip – alternatively clinging to his arms, blunt nails digging into his skin, and kicking or screaming. He looks like a child, with his flushed cheeks and haphazard curls (later, the newspapers will say that everyone was surprised by his reaction – and they'll dredge up screenscraps from the documentary, as though all tears were the same and there was no difference between a failed solo and a dead girl). The others are silent and unmoving. Their teeth clink messily as they walk, feeling numb.

They're pushed into a room (but with their silent eyes they register everything as though death had given it a new importance – couch, table, chairs, TV), and it's only as the others move to leave them, muttering about damage control, that Liam talks. 

"Tell us when you know her name," he says, voice a whisper. His eyes are empty – he's shaking, jaw clenched as he tries to keep his knuckles from bumping together.

Zayn comes up behind him and attempts to put a hand on his shoulder, but Liam recoils violently from the touch. "Don't", he says tightly. Zayn doesn't insist.

Harry has fallen silent in a corner, and he's looking at his t-shirt with wide, frightened rabbit eyes. He's the only one who was close enough, the only splattered by blood.  _Murderer murderer murderer_ , his traitorous brain screeches at him, and he wants to yell that he's done nothing wrong but it's too loud, too loud, and he spots a bloodstain on his finger that makes him want to retch. Bile rises up in his throat.

He's shaking, too. It's a game of mirrors, each one of them looking at the others to see who cracks first, who bursts and breaks and crumbles and asks the questions that they all have, ready and burning on the tip of their tongues, who says,  _did we do this_ and  _how do we undo it_ , because they're a  _we_  whether they want it or not, in this more than anything.

Niall looks at Harry like he thinks his shaking body holds some kind of answer. It doesn't. Harry is looking at Louis, standing in front of the window, back straight and unmoving.

Liam looks over them and thinks it sort of morbidly ironic that the tragedy keeps them apart, lonely bodies still reeling, instead of the tight, hot unity of laced fingers and heads bent together that they usually are. This pain, he starts to think – but he chokes on it, and this isn't pain, this is something else and it's  _worse._

(Each time one of them opens their mouth to say something,  _anything_ that will stop this silence from eating them slowly, devouring their insides as they stare blankly at each other with folded hands and screaming hearts, the images replay in their head, their names hanging in the air for a handful of seconds before the  _bang_ (but in their heads it's always louder, deafening even, like slamming a door or a coffin hard enough to crack the wood) and the body falling forward before crashing with a sick sound against the barrier.)

"They all left," Louis says eventually. His voice is cold, doesn't waver.

They all want to ask if the body is still there, but they don't.

Louis's words seem to have spurred something in Niall, because he shoots up, lip bitten and bruised, bleeding ( _as though there hadn't been enough blood, god, god_ ). His hands fly to his hair, "I can't -"

He starts heading for the door but Liam shifts enough that he is standing in front of it like some sort of guardian, almost out of habit.

"Just -"

Zayn looks up. His eyes are dark and cruel. No tears. "Shut up if you don't have anything useful to say," he says, but his body betrays him (knee bobbing up and down, and Liam sees the images under his eyelids, the same that loop in front of his own eyes whenever he blinks).

Niall flushes an angry red (they haven't seen that shade yet – they've seen the blushing and the anger and even the arousal, but not this, not the blood rising for another blood, for the death, panic and shock and so many other things). "Don't -", he stutters, "you can't -" (but what do you say?).

And there's silence, then, more silence that suffocates them quietly like an ocean of lead, and Liam knows that they shouldn't stay silent, they should  _do_ something to stop the images from seeping into their brains, but it's too late, and – (what do you say?).

But Harry, Harry, curled up around himself, eighteen with long snake arms winded around his knees and eyes red with tears, brown and green swirling like mud in his pupils, says, "Is it our fault?"

(what do you say?)

*

"No," spits Zayn, and it tears the silence brusquely, a long, stretching sound, nails on a chalkboard.

(He talks because it's the only way to push death away – he doesn't like it, and usually he keeps quiet, content with letting the thoughts swirl in his head, undisturbed, but this – they need to talk. They can't let the silence eat them. Zayn refuses to let it happen. He's worked so hard for this.)

"But -" Harry splutters. He's the one who always wants to be guilty, and Zayn feels anger pool between his teeth – in the creases of the enamel – that he's trying to drag them down with him. "She s-said our names."

Niall turns around, body twisted on its axis. "Shut up," he growls, teeth bared.

Louis hasn't moved. If they didn't know him, they would believe that he doesn't  _care_  – but they know him. They know each other. This doesn't change anything.

Harry unwinds, limbs uncurling, and wipes snot on his sleeve. He looks like he wants to take a step forward and jab a finger at Niall's chest, accuse  _him_ , but he doesn't move. His shoulders are shaking. Louis can hear his bones clinking like a necklace from where he is, dark eyes fixed on the body-sized blood stain. 

Niall and Harry are breathing, loudly, rattling breaths grating the other's nerves. Liam opens his mouth to say, "Stop breathing," but the words shrink back into his mouth and try to choke him, death, death,  _death_.

Harry tears the t-shirt off his chest, clawing at the fabric. Niall steps towards him with hooded eyes and it feels ugly, it feels intimate and  _dangerous_ , their hands overlapping to disentangle his scrawny arms from the sleeves. Zayn makes an aborted movement to tell them to stop. Louis grinds his teeth. Liam  _watches_.

And they probably should have expected it, but they still jump when Zayn lunges and grips Louis's neck, eyes crazy, and whispers, "Say something. Say  _something_ , you bastard."

Louis doesn't say anything – only yelps, surprised, and falls silent, neck taut against Zayn's hand. His back is tense, a piano wire, ready to snap. Harry whimpers, "Lou, lou, lou, lou," like a lullaby, curled around Niall's ribs, on the ground, again. Niall is maybe crying, but what he really wants to do is scream ( _howhowhowhowhowhowwhy_ ). Harry – frail, breakable Harry – is his anchor.

"It's just a  _girl_ ," says Louis at last, his voice dripping with contempt ( _they know him. This doesn't change anything, does it?_ ). It jolts the others back to reality, a domino pile of teenage boys waking up to a ratty couch and the pregnant stench of blood.

Louis turns around. They meet him for the second time, Louis Tomlinson, altered by death, scathed. "It's just a girl," he repeats.

Liam – but Liam will always be the hero, how can that not be annoying, irritating, aggravating, that he'll always be the one to save the day with his solitary kidney and his pretty girlfriend, the only  _normal_ one out of them all – walks to him, grips his shoulders to turn him around and hugs him, a full-bodied hug, fingers digging into his sides. Zayn gets caught in the struggle, falls on an elbow, sharp bone colliding with his plexus. Louis doesn't say anything. Louis looks ahead over Liam's shoulder, at the heap of NiallandHarry on the floor, or maybe further, through the wall.

Harry is mumbling curses in Niall's skin. Niall wishes he knew how to make him stop, but it's Harry Styles –  _whatwashernamedidweknowherwhatifshejustwantedahugwecouldhavestoppedandtoldherhellodidwedothisthisisourfaultniallnialllouislouis_

The words seep into Niall's skin and infect him. His skin itches – he wishes he could just step out of it and let it here, pooled on the floor, wide wide eyes full of fear and flawed, freckled limbs. He tightens his grip around Harry's middle, as though trying to squeeze the air out of him.

They can't say that it wasn't just a girl and they can't say that it was nothing, so they don't say anything. Louis stands there, fists clenching and unclenching like a light switch,  _on, off, on, off_. 

*

Management – pressed, monogrammed suits with shiny leather shoes and silver bracelets – know how to deal with death. They flinch, wince and then they get over it. She didn't scream their name when she shot herself. What they don't know how to deal with is five shaking, mumbling teenagers with crazy eyes and bare, blood-stained chests.

So they just slip into the room, say, "Melanie Horton, fourteen, from Alabama," and "stay here," and "don't move", and when nothing but silence answers them, they slip back out the door and close it behind them.

They'll get over it. Everyone does. It's already yesterday's news, to be honest.

 *

(They think - -

 Niall thinks in color, swirling and violent. His heartbeat pushes imprints of red in the stream of thoughts that go through his brain (the girl's – Melanie's – shape is a dull yellow, lurking between a  _ohmygodohmygodohmygod_ and a  _don't_ ). He's torn between shock and indignation and, because he's maybe the kindest of them all, in the end, compassion. His thoughts remember being fourteen and head over heels for someone that will never know he exists, that sounds cruel and mean from the distance (but now he knows it's just weariness, the heavy exhaustion that settles into your bones when you work too much, always surrounded by thousands of nameless faces).

Niall thinks,  _i'm sorry_  (blue) and  _I wish I could have done something_ (orange) and  _why did you do that_ (a dull red). He tries to block the images, and when they come he paints over them like they're a coloring, green for her shirt, pink for her lipstick.

Liam thinks in block lettering. He thinks in short sentences. Liam is so used to thinking – he's done it all his life, and he's  _good_ at it, it's one of the few things he's good at, so he does that, he thinks. He puts all the words in tiny cases and brings them together,  _not_ ,  _your_ ,  _fault_. He makes them make sense. Thinking isn't dangerous ground for Liam.

(The dangerous ground is his body. They don't see it because they don't  _know_ , and they probably can't imagine, but if he didn't hold the reins on his stomach he would puke all over himself until he didn't have guts, and he would tear at his flesh and his hair and try not to think but only to feel. This isn't familiar ground. Thinking isn't the appropriate reaction. Later he'll snap and throw a lamp at the wall and watch the pieces of it fall on the floor, dislocated, but by this time they'll be back together and he'll fall back into Louis's arms, heavy and numb.)

Harry thinks –  _oh my god why did you do this why did you oh my god lou li zayn ni the blood the blood the blood the_ blood  _pretty eyes why did she do that to us it isn't fair it isn't – fair it isn't fair someone save me save me god_ (and it never stops, either – Harry thinks like a child, and he's a singer to the core, an artist, so he only thinks with his own heart, about himself, about his own pain and he revels in it. The worst, for him, was to  _see_  her – the immediate jolt of nothingness the shock pushed into his body, painful like he thought nothing could ever be).

Harry thinks like he's going to write a song, and he probably will, when management let them write their own songs, eventually. He'll call it  _Melanie Horton_ , because subtlety never was his strong suit, and it's going to be a commercial success. The papers will dig up the story and call him beautiful, genius, inspired with his hand clamped over his mouth and his shirt splashed with blood, because the truth never matters. (Melanie's parents will sue and win a couple million dollars.)

Zayn thinks in black and white, sentences he's heard hundreds of times running before his pupils in rows of small letters, printed cleanly on pristine paper, like signs on the road ( _you can go faster, you're going to crash, turn around, stop_ ). He reviews them one by one ( _sorry for your loss, all my condolences, she couldn't take the pain, i'm sorry, don't beat yourself up over it, darling_ ) but they don't fit in the hole the gun has made. Nothing fits. Void, blood, and that's it.

Zayn thinks – he tries to, at least, but nothing comes up. Blank. And he's cold, but he isn't sad, because this, this isn't happening, this can't have happened. 

Louis doesn't think.

(Or maybe he does, because his thoughts can't lie.))

*

They'll need to talk. There's a clock ticking, a hourglass, sand, whatever you want to call it, time dripping from the edges of this moment and they're going to run out of it, soon, soon, sooner. They'll need to go out there – say  _something_. It's lurking behind them like a childhood monster, hand in hand with the ghost of a girl named Melanie Horton with nail polish and a bullet through her head.

And this – this doesn't change anything but it  _does_. It makes Harry Styles crawl, on his knees, beg his best friend –  _lou, lou,_ look  _at me –_  and it makes Louis Tomlinson look down at him with steel in his eyes. It makes America chuckle and sob for a second, shake its head in disbelief (mother country, close-lipped with red lipstick and painted eyelids, giant beating heart that doesn't care) and forget. It makes parents cry.

It makes death – it makes death waltz in and wrap them all in torturous heat, freezing cold, say  _i'm there_  in their children ears. It makes their bodies twist. It  _changes_ things – it lies down the queen and the king, simple as that, chess pieces face down against the board, screaming pawns surrounding them.

It even makes Liam Payne shake, that's what dying like that does.

"Hold me," he says, his voice broken (a boy that never asked anyone to hold him before, never had to ask), but they don't move. They look at him, strangers, and Liam Payne, Liam Payne doesn't understand so he says, louder, " _Hold me_." like that will fix everything (but it won't).

Zayn moves towards him slowly, as though he were underwater. His hug is all pointy bones and cold, cold flesh, the hug of someone that's been out in the rain, whipped by the cruel wind until they forgot their name. It's not what Liam wanted, what he had asked for (and does he ever ask for anything, does he, does he) but he doesn't move out of it, lets himself be strangled and suffocated by a body that doesn't want him and that he doesn't want.

 ( _Melanie Horton_ , Harry says in Niall's skin, against his arm – trying to exorcise her,  _crazy, crazy, crazy_ , but he knows she isn't, he's the one who's crazy and her ghost is looking at him over Niall's shoulder.)

Their bodies are wrong, too (everything is wrong). They don't know how to hold each other – they can't remember the nooks they used to settle into, the tender cavities of flesh that they found so effortlessly when they were still young and reckless, an hour ago, their eyes shining bright with the elation of their success. They've lost the codes – and here they are now, five steel, fire-proof safes, standing up against each other, dumped in a war they don't know how to fight. Here they are.

And they don't really know who moves first – does it matter? - but suddenly they're all pouring through the door (are they trying to escape, someone asks in the background, but they weren't imprisoned), rushing outside, to the stain. (Her body isn't there anymore – they took it away and wrapped it in black, labeled it 'suicide', just another nameless corpse to get rid of). 

And they don't fall to their knees, no, they don't – or maybe they do but this isn't praying (and what if someone saw them, saw them with blood on their fingers, knuckles rapping against the gravel). They're not to blame for this – they just want to see (the other faces assault them, too, they see them every day, interchangeable hair and interchangeable fingers, reaching, mouths, talking, yelling, screaming, and is there a black sheep amongst them, a fourteen-year-old devil with a gun in her jacket, ready to fire).

"It's okay," Liam chokes (his mouth is numb, too. Death wants him mute and blind).

"It's not okay," Louis says in return, other bullets, flying against each other.

They would hate each other if they could, or they would hate her – anything that would make this better, less immense, less chest-crushingly, soul-wreckingly awful, anything that would let them put adjectives on it _._ (And they'd part, too, if they could, they would tear each other apart but they can't, they can only stay together and suffocate. They don't even know how to love each other anymore.)

"We're together."

 It's Harry – he isn't an optimist, and they know that he doesn't think this love can save them (it won't – nothing will save them know, and they'll bear the scars).  _We're together_ , he says – because it's the only thing they have left.

"Are we?"

They'll forget this day, you know – one day someone will ask them about it and they won't remember, they won't remember Louis breaking down and breaking down and Harry catching him halfway, and they won't remember falling together and breathing the cold january air as though they were free. They won't remember crying until they were bloodless. They'll blink and say, 'Sorry,' and they won't remember five boys, shivering, the pads of their fingers stained with stranger blood, trying to stop death from winning the war.

* 

(Things happen.

Niall ends up with scratches along his wrists, threading red with the blue veins, crawling up to his elbow. No one asks, he doesn't answer – if anything, they understand how you can want to feel alive and  _hurt_  (because death takes that away too, even the pain, and they hadn't realized, they had never really thought about it, to be honest). It's winter – he wears gloves, hard leather against the skin.

Louis never quite gets around to sympathy. They stop asking him to, deal with their own wounds. Sometimes Harry will curl up against his ribs and listen to him breathe – and he'll pretend that they're the same, and he'll fall asleep to the regularity of his breathing (it's a bit ironic, when you think about it – if they were alike, he would never breathe like that, long breaths, always the same length). Louis doesn't sleep. Purple circles spread around his eyes, and sometimes when they're waken up by nightmares the boys find him standing in front of a window, like a guardian.

Zayn smokes twenty cigarettes a day. It's death two times in a row for him – one of them nice and tidy, a funeral with closed casket and flowers and cake at the reception, and the other one raw, messy and brash with fire and blood and screaming. Of course he's choking on it. Of course he's fucking wrecked – who wouldn't be? Zayn doesn't give up smoking but gradually (it doesn't happen in a day but in ten, twenty, months) he gets the shock to wear off his system. He gives up seeing guns everywhere when people open their jackets.

Harry – but then Harry's always been a mess, even before that. And Harry will never forget, but it's okay because he likes it, he likes the pain and the ache and the crying. He eases back into his usual pain, and it's gentler, more comfortable – the blood isn't quite as red and the girl is just this tiny bit prettier. He'll write a song, did he tell you that? He'll call it  _Melanie Horton_ , and it'll be beautiful, because by the time he writes it death will have become romantic and beautiful. And maybe that isn't the right way to deal with it, but it's his way, and he deals. It's more than anyone could have asked for, really.

Liam gets less responsible. He drinks, sometimes, he gets the single room and he drinks with gunshots ringing through his head. But he's always known how to smile and say the right thing. He smiles. The right thing is never right, but it's never wrong either. They expected him to be okay, so he is. He tells their manager that they don't want questions about it (they all know how they handle that, the garish television presenters with their sorry little grimaces and they're not real  _persons_ , they talk about death like it's something that stings a little, a papercut or a fading bruise, and it's not). But Liam Payne was always going to be okay. No one was really afraid for him. (And so they don't see his strained smiles and heavy shoulders and the way he doesn't let anyone hold him anymore.)

And they're all damaged, and they don't get back together like they used to, don't slot back together effortlessly because you  _can't_ do that, you just can't. It doesn't happen.

But there's Liam holding Harry, and there's Louis slipping into the shower, wordless, and coming out looking clean, and there's the blood recessing, and the nightmares recessing too like waves on a moonlit night, sometimes coming back but never staying for long. There's Niall not shaking as much when he meets a fan with blond hair and nail polish, and Zayn behind him, a silent shadow. There's Liam – their voice – saying, "We're like brothers" one day and them believing it for the first time in months. 

It's like that, grief – it happens, and it leaves scars, but eventually you forget.)

*

They're not there yet, though.

There's a flash, another. They're blinded. The chatter surrounds them, vicious, and Harry curls a hand around Niall's forearm to keep him from panicking.  _No death_ , he seems to be saying with his blunt nails and strong fingers, monosyllabic.

The others try to fight off the waves of panic. They've been out yesterday – and the day before, because they go crazy if you keep them in a closed space for too long, especially now, after everything – but this isn't the same. This isn't  _out_. This is  _in_ , and they can't escape.

The thought tears a startled breath out of Niall's throat, and they all turn towards him, tuned to him. He looks ahead.  _Let's do this_ , he's thinking. Their suits itch (blood prickling beneath their skin, calves, elbows, napes and the corners of their eyes).

They walk in a tight unity, limbs bumping. Liam can't really discern if it's because they want to be together or if it's because they don't want to go near the crowd (a pack of wolves – they really look like wolves, wolves with sharp teeth, cameras, pads and pens).

The podium seems light-years away as they walk, blinded by the flashes, limb slow as though they were underwater. It's better than before, Liam remarks absently, better than when they walked without touching at all – because there's Zayn's hand on Louis's shoulder and Harry's arm heavy over Niall's, and Liam himself in their midst, Louis's forearm hot against his flank. It's not like before, because it'll never be, but it's better. 

He looks at Louis, empty eyes.  _We can do this_ , he tries to say, and Louis nods, or maybe it's just a trick of the light. Liam remembers the paper folded in his breast pocket and wonders why he's always the one to talk. He was never a great public speaker. He was never great at being in the spotlight. He's too nice.

Harry looks at him (won't they stop thinking that he's their savior?) and Liam wonders where his blood-splattered shirt ended up. A flash of scrawny torso, ribs peeking out beneath the skin, assaults him and makes his pace falter. The others push him forward wordlessly.  _Don't stop_ , they seem to say, Zayn's hand in the small of his back, clammy palm over his shirt.  _Don't stop now_.

Liam doesn't stop. They can do this. (He knows. He knows they'll forget – the more they hurt, the easier they'll forget. He won't. The images always stay with him. He remembers when he was seven and a kid from school – Shaun – pushed the swing too hard and broke his arm. It wasn't an accident, but no one ever asked him, so he didn't tell.)

He steps on the podium. The other climb beside him, too close for comfort. Liam breathes in the microphone, heavy and regular, fake-calm. He knows how he looks like (a father with brown eyes and big hands, and his four wrecked children behind him – but that's not what he is, just what they want him to be). He wants to say,  _look at me_. The silence hangs in the room. The journalists look like a pack of thieves huddled around a grave, gained by a momentary sadness. The moment feels solemn, but it's only a pretend.

"Talk," Louis whispers in his ear.

Liam resists the urge to turn around and run away (but there's no away from death, and he knows that, or if he doesn't, he should).

He clears his throat. "Melanie Horton," he starts, voice steady and loud in the silence, "was a fourteen-year-old young girl from Alabama. Her death came as a shock and we wish all our condolences to the parents who..."

**Author's Note:**

> Russian translation of this work by the gorgeous Polina is [here](http://ficbook.net/readfic/1585406).


End file.
